Chicago food in high definition
With Ina Pinkney at the Union League Club Several live events in the last month—Ina Pinkney led a Q&A at the Union League Club to a very appreciative audience of food fans… I also appeared at Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee with Kyle Cherek, host of the NPR podcast Classic Eats, which I was on […]
Barnes & Noble on Diversey Lots of appearances on Substack, podcasts, and even old school media, as well as in person: I talked food with Bob Sirott on WGN Radio here. I also did a bit with Dane Neal, but he was subbing for someone else, which I’d guess is why it’s not online. I […]
Chapter 1 of my book in Chicago magazine If you want to read an actual physical magazine article about my book, Chicago mag’s issue with the first chapter (about Louis Szathmary) is on newsstands now. Go here to read it online. I was guiltily on Car Con Carne with James Van Osdol. I say “guiltily” […]
Books on display at a private event at the Chicago Club. My book is here! Tuesday was the official release date, and also the date of the launch party, held at LouLou by Lula. Big thanks to Jason Hammel and everyone from Lula/LouLou who helped make it happen; to Steve Dolinsky, who did a terrific […]
Me in the green room at NBC Chicago So that was me slightly before 6:00 am (yikes!) at NBC Chicago, in their green room/staff lounge area, which doubled as the set where we shot me in conversation with Matt Rodrigues for Matt in the Morning, part of their local morning line up with the Today […]
Well, I saw Andy’s soup at a museum in Wilmington, Delaware, but can’t say I actually had soup with him. Or any other Andrew, like Wyeth, whose work I also saw there. Anyway, needless to say a big year mainly for getting my book over the finish line of publication, but I did manage to […]
My first review, from the trade publication for booksellers. They enjoyed it! Go here to read the full review.
Announcements about events, reviews and interviews, etc. relating to my book will be posted here. In the meantime save 15% by going to the book’s page at Indiepubs (ignore the text saying to click the picture above; click the link in this paragraph); enter the code FOODITOR15.
A curious year in which I didn’t feel like I found much of interest outside of the mid-to-high end; partly I was really trying to wrap up my book, so little time for driving around far-flung corners of the city hunting for new Mexican or Chinese delicacies. I ate many good things, but it was […]
I was in Toronto early this year, and I’m heading to Mexico City at the end of the year. So I may yet have better things in 2023… but I’m declaring the year closed once this publishes. 10. Ribeye and cobb salad, Gibsons I’d say Gibsons is probably the most popular and successful restaurant in […]
Pordenone. 2022 could have been the year that everything went back to normal. But of course it was never going to be that—we’re still figuring out what the new normal is. For me, my habit—of twenty years, as the list of past top tens at the bottom shows—of scouting the city for new things, which […]
If 2020 was adjusting to a new reality, 2021 was new reality and old reality all mixed together. We returned to restaurants, and we returned to restaurants shutting down because somebody on staff got COVID. We traveled– I even went overseas– and yet by year’s end travel seemed to be shutting down too. So who […]
My sons hand-pressing tacos for a lockdown meal I’ve always been interested in food; I moved to Chicago in part for deep dish pizza and all those other exotic things to be had here. (The other part was to be able to see obscure movies without having to book and project them myself.) But my […]
Sons, at The Loyalist for Son #2’s (left) birthday It’s a transitional time in life for me—one kid out of the house already, another about to be. They have been such a part of my dining life for so long, my companions on discoveries, the audience I practiced my material on before it went into […]
Sky Full of Bacon exists now mainly to host this list annually (and for its own archive, of course). I figure Fooditor readers have had enough of my opinions and list making by the time The Fooditor 99 is done, and anyway, the purposes of that list and this one were always a little different. The Fooditor […]
To be entirely repetitive of my 2016 list, I wrote a book of what restaurants to go eat at in Chicago, so I don’t want to repeat all that here. Instead this is a more intimate list of ten things I ate for the first time in 2017, that I’m sitting here thinking about, wishing […]
I spent enough of 2016 making a big list—The Fooditor 99, now available at Amazon and for Kindle!—so I’m not going to belabor what’s in that guidebook. But I’ve been making ten best lists for over a decade now so I might as well keep at it. Here are my ten favorite things I ate, […]
Fooditor Radio 27: Inside Michelin’s Brain 2017, with Anthony Todd, Sarah Freeman and Maggie Hennessy.
Fooditor Radio 26: The Parthenon Falls, But Chicago Marches On, with Joe Campagna and Anthony Todd.
Fooditor Radio 25: In the Backyard With ManBQue, with John Carruthers, John Scholl and Jesse Valenciana.
Fooditor Radio 24: Tacos, Burgers and Other Tastes of Chicago, with Nick Kindelsperger of the Chicago Tribune, and David Hammond of New City and Wednesday Journal.
Fooditor Radio 23: My Dad the Critic, My Son the Restaurateur, with Sherman and Josh Kaplan.
I fretted before our trip to Japan, because here was a chance to dine in one of the world’s greatest food cultures, perhaps my only chance to sample certain things—sushi, wagyu beef, etc.—at their absolute peak. So the clock was ticking, I had to get it right! And picking outstanding restaurants to go to was difficult; […]
Fooditor Radio 22: It Might As Well Be Spring Openings
Fooditor Radio 21: Talking with Jonathan Gold and Laura Gabbert about ‘City of Gold’
The lovely Susan, and me in a tux. No Instagram filters, that was actual lighting at this event (at Ravinia). If you’ve come by here you surely know that the bulk of my activity now is at Fooditor.com, but I feel like a top 10 list is a more personal thing, especially if you’re not […]
Fooditor Radio 20: The Force Steakens, or: 2015 in Review with guests Anthony Todd, Joe Campagna, Melissa McEwen and Chris Chacko
Airwaves Full of Bacon is now Fooditor Radio, the audiophonic auxiliary of Fooditor, The Total Chicago Food Experience. (It’s numbered episode 19 to maintain continuity with the 18 episodes of Airwaves Full of Bacon.) For more about this post, go here. You can follow Fooditor Radio by subscribing at the old Airwaves iTunes page, which […]
Introducing Fooditor from Michael Gebert on Vimeo. Music by Kevin Macleod.
The 50 in the headline is not literally true, but it’s not that far off either— I haven’t written a review post in ages here. Mind you, if anything really struck me, it probably wound up somewhere else— so you’ve had the chance to read about things like dim sum at Dolo or dinner at […]